Old Time Radio Programs. Detective series. 298 episodes of Dragnet.


This audio is part of the collection: Old Time Radio
It also belongs to collection: Radio Programs

Keywords: Old Time Radio; Detective series; Dragnet; Jack Webb; Crime Drama

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

Individual Files

Write a review
Downloaded 836,204 times Reviews
Average Rating:

Reviewer: ken2ca - - October 30, 2012
Subject: THESE ARE PUBLIC DOMAIN?
From the 1950s and these are public domain? Isn't at least the music still under copyright? What about the scripts? I understand the actual performances and recording might be without copyright if it wasn't renewed, but what about the other elements?

Reviewer: powers91474 - - February 19, 2012
Subject: love my dragnet!!!
i wish they made them like this, everyone one these shows is pure entertainment i found my very first episode five years ago when i stumbled upon them on itunes iphone and after searching the net for more i found the treasure that is INTERNET ARCHIVE!!! lets all support this site with a monthly gift of any amount so they can continue to bring us these wonderful shows from days past...just as pbs offers us unfettered access to quility tv this site gives us what is the best that writers and actors and directors had in the golden age of radio i can say since those first days of listening i find my self more relaxed and in a better state of mind say than after watching some silly tv show i think it was a different time when most of these shows were made and i believe as the quility of what we put in our minds went down with the so did the moral fabric of our souls ... dont believe me instead of watching those disgusting shows at night turn on one of dragnets episodes or a whistler or phillip marlow and sit back with the lights low and just relax with the tone of the words i swear its better than zanax for stress anyway thanks INTERNET ARCHIVE youve givin me many a peaceful evening and my mind lost in the age of old time radio

Reviewer: Dario Witer - - January 20, 2012
Subject: Classic Police Drama
Of all the crime dramas that ever appeared on radio, none can beat the intencity and suspence of DRAGNET. It's no-nonsense approach to presenting the dry, but realistic daily routines of police work, plus the stark drama of fighting criminals, made this series an all-time classic, both on radio, and later on, television. DRAGNET continues to be an all-time classic, and, is the drama that set the standard of all police dramas that followed it, have tried to emulate. None have been able to do so since.

Reviewer: mnpd - - June 29, 2011
Subject: How times have changed!.....
I'm a retired metropolitan police commander, and knew the business had changed. I just didn't realize how much until I listened to an episode of radio Dragnet.

Friday hauls in an entire load of bar customers because they might have seen a shooting. Then, an overnight "dragnet" produces over 200 more suspects who are promptly taken downtown for interrogation.

Effective yes... but Friday wouldn't last a week on today's police departments. You can't take anyone "in for questioning." And, there are no suspects anymore either. Well, there are suspects, but you can't do a thing about it unless you have enough evidence to arrest them. The only people the cops take in these days are those which have been arrested for an articulable crime, and evidence exists to prosecute them.

Yep, after the first week, Friday would have at least a dozen Title 42/Section 1983 lawsuits pending on him. Worse, his department would side with the plaintiffs by claiming that they told him NOT to conduct himself in that manner. So, Friday would find himself working in the Tow-in-Lot or answering the phones down in Warrants until the Department figured out a way to get rid of him.

Joe Friday is incapable of understanding the change in times. In his day his job as a cop was to catch criminals. Today, a cop's first priority is to not get sued. Forget the criminals, because no cop agency ever got sued for NOT catching a criminal. No one sues you for being lazy, and being lazy pays just as much as being vigilant.

But never fear because Joe Friday types don't even apply for the job anymore. The business has been changed for so long that even the applicants have evolved. Before I retired, I couldn't believe the numbers of one-year rookies with the attitudes of 20-year veterans. You couldn't get them to work on-time, or devote their time on-duty to catching crooks. They were just as likely to be found reading the newspaper in some remote alley as their gray-haired co-workers.

Reviewer: Back To The 80s - - January 9, 2011
Subject: Awesome Series
Dragnet is no doubt in the top 5 all time classic OTR series of all time. I absolutely love this series!

Reviewer: mally-one - - November 18, 2010
Subject: Who Knew?
Who knew good detective work was powered by "Fatima Brand" cigarettes?

Reviewer: Trekbikefan - - June 2, 2010
Subject: Thoughtful and engaging
I remember watching old re-runs of the Dragnet 1967 TV show with my dad when I was a kid, then recently I watched a few episodes from the original 1950's TV series after finding some cheaply produced DVD versions of a few of them. Then I found these old radio programs on the internet recently. I must say that these are as good as, if not better than, either of the TV series (although the cigarette advertisements are somewhat laughable today). I enjoy listening to these while riding my bicycle or mowing the lawn, they definitely help to pass the time. The action sequences are a bit hard to follow (with canned gunfire soundbytes interspersed with the protagonists' talking to each other, leaving what is actually happening a little ambiguous until the end.) but this is forgivable, since they comprise only a minute portion of the programs.

The dry documentary style of the shows is what sets them apart from most police dramas, both past and present. I actually enjoy the fact that an episode will devote a 2 minute sequence to SGT Friday waiting on hold for an operator to transfer his call, or another similar sequence to SGT Friday and Romero talking to each other from the inside of a car trunk where they are awaiting some unsuspecting criminals...this adds to the realism of the shows...a lot of police work is pretty boring stuff; as the son of a cop myself, I realize this very well. Indeed, most of us will admit, even those of us with the most exciting jobs will have a large part of our day that is fairly mundane. The Dragnet shows capture the mundane aspects of life that most dramatizations miss.

I think that these shows are a throwback to a different era; although many have criticized our ancestors (and rightly, at times) for such wrongs as racism and ethnocentrism, listening to these shows has shown me the better side of 1940's and 50's U.S. society. The episodes show a keen awareness of the darker side of life (tackling such crimes as pedophilia, pornography production and distribution, serial killings, and cop shootings), yet they deal with these topics in a sensitive and tasteful way that stands in sharp contradistinction to the tasteless dramatizations that one often sees of such crimes on TV today. Criminals and lowlifes are not glorified with quasi-voyeuristic depictions and descriptions of their vile work, as is so often the case today in law enforcement television programs. I think I have learned a lot about 1950's America just by listening to these episodes, because you pick up on the little subtleties that you're not necessarily going to find in a history book (and the subtleties are just as much in what the characters do say as in what they don't say...there were certain things you just didn't talk about back then, because there were rules of polite behavior that were a bit more conservative, and possibly superior in many ways, to what we have now).


The show also makes vague occasional references to the social stigmas associated with being a police officer (One can hear the resigned frustration in the voice of SGT Friday, when, at the end of one program, he simply reflects back at her a lady's accusation: "You're right; I wouldn't understand...I'm a cop).

Reviewer: bippy - - March 27, 2010
Subject: Well done series, esp. the ones with Sgt Romero
The first few seasons of Dragnet were the best with Romero as Friday's partner. The best show I heard was the chilling 'Claude Jimmerson Child Killer', where the cops meet in the house of a neighbor of a missing child to organize a search party and it turns out it's the killer's house, as Sgt Friday somewhat embarrassed, realizes he missed some clues right under his own nose.

Reviewer: Rayme - - January 20, 2010
Subject: Love the old days and this show
I remember as a boy my grandma got me into talk radio, then thru osmosis, I found an L.A. radio station that would play old time radio at 2 am. I remember the time cause I played in a Rock band at the time and what no one in the audience knew was that I couldn't wait for the show to be over cause it was about a 45 min drive home and I would turn on the old time radio show and think of my grandma. That was the early 90s. Growing up I watched the tv version of dragnet and liked it and now that I"m in my 40s, to find all the episodes of it here if a gift. It was a better time, simpler, more innocent and I wish alot that I grew up back then in the 40s and 50s. Nowdays noone has the morals or honesty of back then. To whoever made and maintains this site...thank you so much and Grandma...I miss you, thank you for sharing your love of radio with me, it never left.

Reviewer: feekie - - November 3, 2009
Subject: Love the Early Shows Best!
I love the early Dragnet shows the best. Ed Backstrand's intensity and Joe Friday's partner, Romero, made the early shows really fun to listen to. I liked the later shows too and the tv shows, but the early ones are really classics.

Reviewer: ohsnapiam56 - - August 19, 2009
Subject: A Great Time Capsule
I love these episodes. Not only are they high class entertainment, but they are a window to the past...people were more trusting, more polite. Men wore hats and took them off when talking to a woman; woman wore dresses and heels; people dressed up to go to the movies, etc. The drudgery of police work then was amazing...no computers, no cell phones (I have an old phone from this time period and my niece and nephew asked me how to use it recently)....all leg work. Listening to these stories is way better than the junk they have on TV now.

Reviewer: LeGrande - - December 27, 2008
Subject: Timely topics even for today ...
buildings under bomb threats, teenage and adult drug use, pedophiles, sexual abuse ... it seems like things weren't all that different in the late 40s and 50s than it is today. While the machine-gun patter is a comedy cliche today (think about the Mathnet parodies on CTW's Square One TV show), it did allow the show to squeeze in a lot of dialogue and action in a short period of time. Dragnet is one of OTR's best series, and should be included in any collection.

Reviewer: - - April 21, 2008
Subject: More more more
I'm downloading the rest of them for my Sansa. I really enjoy breaking up a day with a couple episodes of Old Time Radio. They are easier to follow than a book when multitasking (though it takes more concentration than music) and I can lose myself for a short while. Anyone with a portable player should set up a folder with some Radio and try it out. Home listening would be fine of course, but what a great way to kill time when on the go.

Reviewer: 2muchtv - - March 9, 2008
Subject: Great radio show, scary commercials
In hindsight it's somewhat difficult to appreciate just how creative, risk-taking and innovative this remarkable radio show really was. The visionary recipe started by bringing together the institutional documentary style of programs like the Westinghouse "Adventures in Research" with the character dimensions and musical score of a radio soap opera. Webb then mixed in gritty elements considered inappropriate at the time, interviewing 'dance hall girls' and having characters say things like "Do you mind if I eat while we talk?"

Targeting the voracious crime-drama appetite of post war America and served with a heaping helping of Roosevelt-era social engineering, Webb used mass media to disseminate cautionary tales to encourage good behavior among the masses. Rendered a cliché by the longevity borne by its overwhelming success, Dragnet is a fascinating study of rapid character development; plot pacing and exploiting the time worn adage that truth really is stranger than fiction.

Oh goodness! Those Fatima (Pronounced fa-tee'-ma) cigarette commercials. Using lessons from WWII propaganda, interrogation techniques and the new science of the psychology of consumer behavior, Liggett & Myers (L&M) Tobacco Company tried to resuscitate an aging brand from the late 19th century using radio. According to Wikipedia, "Fatima was the sole sponsor of the early years of the Dragnet radio series. The creator and star of Dragnet, Jack Webb, voiced a number of on-air pitches for the brand and appeared in print advertising as well. There was also a short-lived mystery anthology series called Tales of Fatima, hosted by Basil Rathbone. The brand's old-fashioned image caused it to lose market share from the mid-1950s onward, and L&M eventually phased it out by around 1980."

Reviewer: Framan - - February 8, 2008
Subject: Double thumbs up
I agree with everybody else's comments... this collection is top shelf stuff.

Reviewer: jeffzkrazie - - November 16, 2007
Subject: Greatness
I am in OTR heaven when I am on this page no doubt, Dragnet is my favorite OTR show of all time!!!!! Thanks for whomever uploaded these!!!!!

Reviewer: foggymtbutt - - October 8, 2007
Subject: Yes!
What the previous reviewer said, I would like to echo.

Reviewer: Eklectic1 - - October 5, 2007
Subject: Old Time Radio
Very well done dramatic episodes, tight writing. I thought Jack Webb was a ham (based on watching Dragnet 1967, 1968, and so on; I was a 60s kid), and then I got curious about these episodes on the radio. They are great, and a real eye-opener! We've become so cynical, it's refreshing (and amazing) to think that just a few years before I was born, people had ideals of a much higher kind. People weren't better, mind you; they just had much higher expectations of how to behave. We were much more socially connected, and in the fragmented society of Los Angeles in the early 50s, you can see the fraying edges of what was to come. Listen, learn, and enjoy. A true cold lemonade to the thirsty, time-traveling mind.

Reviewer: SkipLVC - - August 11, 2007
Subject: Classic Stuff
This is classic old time radio. The attention to detail and the accuracy in presentation is wonderful. The show is full of great radio actors that transitioned well to TV. Effective commercials that make you want to start smoking.